Civilians Lined the Bluffs

The rams that won the Battle of Memphis were the idea of a bridge builder. Charles Ellet Jr. designed the Wheeling Suspension Bridge and built the 1848 Niagara railway span, then concluded after the 1854 sinking of the Arctic that a steamboat could be a weapon. He could not persuade the Navy. In March 1862 Secretary of War Stanton made him a colonel and gave him converted river steamers reporting to the War Department. Shot in the knee aboard the Queen of the West on June 6, he refused amputation and died at Cairo, Illinois, on June 21.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Elmwood Cemetery — 23 mi
  Memphis's oldest active cemetery, a rural garden cemetery of about 1,500 trees opened in 1852, with Black civic leaders, yellow fever victims and the city's whole history in its lots.
• Sun Studio — 23 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.
• Stax Museum of American Soul Music — 23 mi
  A rebuilt Stax studio on the site of the old Capitol Theatre, with a replica of the sloped-floor Studio A, Isaac Hayes's Cadillac and the story of an integrated soul label.
• Beale Street — 24 mi
  The street that became the center of Black Memphis after the Civil War, home to Church's Park, W. C. Handy, Ida B. Wells and the blues, now a National Historic Landmark district.

More markers nearby

• Davies Manor — 5.9 mi
• Sgt. Walter K. Singleton — 9.2 mi
• Paul W. Barrett — 9.5 mi
• Bobby Blue Bland (1930-2013) — 9.5 mi